April 17th, 2009 Add Your Comments Bookmark and Share

Hold on to your horses people, the t’internet is just about to get more interesting. PirateBay.org, the world largest bitTorrent tracker website have just been found guilty in a court in Sweden of promoting copyright infringements. Not of actually committing any copyright offences themselves but just of encouraging it, encouraging it by linking! All of a sudden there is a test case in place that makes us responsible for the content of those we link to. Remind me again what the whole internet is built on? Oh yeah, that’s it, linking! Here’s an example, you can watch illegal material on YouTube. Here’s a link to YouTube. If I was in Sweden what I’ve just broke the law, I’ve just providing you a link to a website that contains material that infringes copyright. So that’ll be a million dollar fine for me and a year in prison then? What a load of complete and utter crap!

The world wide web only exists as a web because of the interlinking between websites. At the end of the day even the search engines like Google and Yahoo are only websites on the web. They are no different from any other search facility of directory service (of which PirateBay was one). I guarantee that you could find every link on PirateBay via other means from much MUCH bigger websites. If all of a sudden we have to become LEGALLY responsible for the websites and content we link to then that’s the end of the internet as far as I’m concerned. Just imagine the nightmare for affiliates? Even just bloggers, could you imagine the mess if every blogger who “promoted copyright theft” by linking to a video (or even embedding it) was up in court.

Traditional media company’s are running scared and have been for several years. They are terrified of what the internet does to their bottom line. Of course the internet should not be a free for all, BUT, targeting people who link is totally the wrong way to go about things. I can’t believe for one minute that the owner of PirateBay won’t get this overthrown because if not every website on the internet suddenly becomes illegal (certainly in Sweden, maybe we should just turn the internet off and not let people in Sweden have access?) If I link to you and you link to something illegal then surely by me linking to you I’m also promoting the illegal activity, where does it end? What the copyright owners should be doing is going after the people who make the content available, those that are doing the uploading. They are breaking the law, they are the ones who should suffer. Take down a site that links to content and another 50 crop up, take down the actual content and your problem is solved.

If somebody sends a parcel bomb through the post to you blame the post service or the postman? NO! You certainly don’t remove the postal service for those that choose to use it legally.

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Paul B